CAPE COD GEOLOGY 



149 



beds as Tertiary. Even Sir Charles Lyell 1 , who visited Gay Head in 1842, 

 saw no evidence of the existence of Cretaceous beds, and Shaler, 2 as late as 1888, 

 regarded all the beds in the Gay Head section below the drift as Tertiary. 



The similarity of the beds at Gay Head to those at Raritan Bay, New 

 Jersey, was recognized by some, but it remained for White 3 to show their age 

 beyond a doubt. The result of White's work was later confirmed and elaborated 

 by Hollick, 4 and four years later the extent of the Tertiary was made out by 

 Dall. B More recently Bibbins 6 and Berry 7 have placed the leaf -bearing Cre- 

 taceous deposits of Marthas Vineyard in the Magothy, the second subdivision 

 of the five Cretaceous formations now recognized in the Atlantic coastal plain, 

 as shown in the following table. 8 



J Rancocas 1 

 Monmouth \ Marine 

 Upper Cretaceous \ Matawan > 

 Magothy 

 Raritan 



Non-marine (estuarine and fluviatile) 



THE MATAWAN MARINE FAUNA 9 



A search for traces of the marine fauna found by Shaler in the fragments 

 of ferruginous sandstone on the south side of Indian Hill near the site of Woods 

 Schoolhouse soon brought to light numerous fragments of rather similar material, 

 which is found as far west as Gay Head in the older drift west of the Devil's 

 Den and to the east throughout the length of the island in the region of ice- 

 laid drift. As noted in the accompanying report on the identification of the 

 fossils by L. W. Stephenson, the material is poorly preserved, but in his opinion 

 it resembles closely the fauna of the Matawan beds of the coastal plain in 

 Maryland. The distribution of the erratic material does not show whether it 



1 Lyell, Charles, On the Tertiary strata of the island of Marthas Vineyard in Massachusetts, Proc. 

 Geol. Soc. London, 4, pp. 31-33, 1842-43. Also Am. Jour. Sci., 46, pp. 318^-320, 1844. 



2 Shaler, N. S., The geology of Marthas Vineyard, Mass., Seventh Ann. Rept. Geol. Survey, pp. 297- 

 363, 1888. 



3 White, David, On Cretaceous plants from Marthas Vineyard, Am. Jour. Sci., 3d ser., 3, pp. 93- 

 101, 1890. 



4 Hollick, Arthur, The Cretaceous flora of southern New York and New England, U. S. Geol. Survey 

 Mon. 50, 1906. 



6 Dall, W. H., Notes on the Miocene and Pliocene of Gay Head, Marthas Vineyard, Mass., Am. 

 Jour. Sci., 3d ser., 48, pp. 296-301, 1894. 



6 Bibbins, A. B., Occurrence of the Magothy formation on the Atlantic Islands, Abstract in Bull. 

 Geol. Soc. America, 21, p. 672, 1910. 



7 Berry, E. W., The age of the Cretaceous flora of southern New York and New England, Jour. Geol. , 

 23, pp. 608-618, 1915. 



8 Clark, W. B., Upper Cretaceous, Maryland Geol. Survey, 1916. 



9 Note by J. B. Woodworth. 



